It had been a few days since her return to the country of Fiore in the aftermath of the tragic events that saw her properly resurrected. No more was her mind and soul fractured. She had properly merged with the soul of her reincarnation and started to walk her own path once more. However, this time was different. She understood now that mindlessly hunting evil would get her simply killed, especially in her current state. She didn't like to admit it, but if she was to face someone like Erebus now it would lead to her getting killed again.

Twisting and shifting the peculiar cube in her hands the woman her mismatched eyes gazed quietly at the location Bucket had left mere moments ago, her lips curving up into a smile. Interesting... so someone else had learned to transcend beyond their limits. Taking a few steps into the clearing Esperia pondered the idea of calling out to the man, but she had a sudden more creative idea of sorts. One that would fit as a calling to a 'Saiyan'.

The elf closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She knew how to tap into it far easier than Lily did, after all she was known to have wielded many magical powers in her previous life. However, this one did always fascinate her. She could still see Bucket's back among the trees as he was leaving, when finally she decided to wordlessly call out to him in a way that was befitting for their powers.

Saiyan magic was the power to turn ones emotions and willpower into raw power, a power that was sleeping dormant within people yet only few possessed the means to properly tap into.

Just transforming wouldn't be enough to draw out his attention, she needed to draw upon something more fierce, more violent. She allowed the suppressed memory to return, her battered and beaten body collapsed on the stone tiles of the alleyway. The rain that clattered relentlessly onto her body as blood started to pool underneath her. These cold heartless eyes that looked at her, denying her existence and the efforts she had done to reach the rank of Captain Commander. It filled her with anger... with such an intense rage she could feel the aura of her soul starting to flare to life. It flickered and flared, sparks of energy radiating around her body. "RYAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" A feral cry escaped her lips, like a savage warcry as her aura flared violently into existence, the golden aura erupting around her as she felt her hair turning a pure golden color, washing away the black and white hues. "KAIOKEN TIMES TEN!"

As she felt the natural limiter on her body being removed her aura became coated in a violent crimson outline, raising a hand as she allowed the mere sweeping motion to be accompanied by an accumulation of her energy, a surge of violent wind gushing into Bucket's direction as if to alert him of her presence, and once he turned around she smiled playfully at him.

"Not going to say hi, 'Papa'?"

The last word was spoken in an uncharacteristic endearing manner, reminiscent of how Lily called Bucket in the past. How would the Warrior Bucket react to seeing his 'daughter' again, wielding the same power he did?

Lately, Bucket had taken to being all by himself. Yet another failure of his, even after the incredible power he had tapped into had allowed him to drive away scores of men, had beaten his self-confidence down quite considerably. What could a man like him ever hope to do to gods and demons if he couldn’t save the girl that called him dad? Thinking of how scared she was, of the pain, probably calling for her friends and her papa..! Just thinking about it, while he meditated within the Aina Forest he now called home, triggered his second stage transformation, mana sparking like electricity before it faded away. He’s no warrior. He’s a beaten animal, without even the energy to be scared of the ocean anymore. Losing Lily.. he realized that it wasn’t the sea that would take away everything he had. People. Always people - religious people! Always them.. always.

A screeching roar caught his attention for a brief moment, his head raising itself even as he aimlessly walked through the forest in his meditative state, though he didn’t think about it any further than that. Whatever scream that was, it wasn’t related to him. It had nothing to do with him. Now that he was thinking of just quietly retiring and hoping someone else would take the fight to the gods, he’d have nothing to do with anyone.

Life, though, isn’t always that simple. An ‘attack’, more of a gust of wind, whipped at his back and made the older man stumble for a moment, forcing him to finally pay attention to what was happening behind him. The sight.. disgusted him. Angered him. He knew that face and that body all too well, the creature that had taken his innocent Lily’s body for her own. A little girl, with no guilt to her name, killed and her body stolen by whatever this thing is.

And now she’d even mock her memory by talking to him just like Lily would. Even called him Papa, just like her.

Anger built up further in him, his hands twitched, knuckles popped loudly as he tensed up his fingers, ready to choke the life out of this foul creature. Mana built up in his body and..! Nothing. His body eased up, the mana dispersed back to normal. “What do you want, creature?” The defeated man asked, knowing it to be pointless to kill her. Lily wouldn’t be back and he couldn’t bring himself to harm her body, even if the owner is different now

Esperia sighed briefly, allowing her aura to flicker and fade as she gazed quietly at him. "It seems you have a bit of a misconception of the events that transpired in Seven..." She shook her head lightly, a hand raised to her own chest, her fingers stretching lightly till the palm of her hand was resting where her heart was. "You seem to believe that Lily is no more, that 'I' devoured her existence and claimed her body for myself like a puppeteer playing a doll?"

She lowered a hand to her side as she continued her explanation. "That is merely a misconception born out of your own guilt and shifting the blame of your inability to protect her." Her words might had sounded harsh, but she was trying to teach him something. "Lily still exists, just like her predecessor does. Certainly, you might had met us while Lily was a dormant psyche, but for the sake of our mutual survival it was necessary for us to combine our existences into one."

She took a step forward, another as she enclosed the distance between them. "I am neither Esperia or Lily, and yet at the same time I am both of them. That is the consequence of when a soul reaches a state of true reincarnation. But to think you would go as far as labeling us a 'creature' and looking at us with such hostility."

She raised her hand toward her chest once more, but this time stopped a few inches away to gaze at her hand. "Was your affection for us merely a ploy to overcome your own shortcomings? Is it merely because we no longer look the same, that you look at us with such disgust? It saddens us. Lily who never had a parental figure of her own truly looked up to you as a father. Even Esperia, who lost her parents at a young age and grew up without the warmth of family felt the endearment Lily held toward to, it had affected her, made even her look fondly upon you."

She placed a hand onto her heart once more, silently letting its rhythmic beating soothe her controlled anger. "Whether you call me Lily or Esperia doesn't matter, for it is still fundamentally correct to address us as either or neither. However..."

She closed her eyes for a moment, slowly letting her hand trail to the side of her body. "We won't let you sully our memory of our 'father' by acting like a whimsical coward."

As she said these words she decided to let a different aura consume her being. This one was clearly different from the Super Saiyan transformation from before, for instead the aura that surrounded her was like a raging fire, the red aura surrounding her entire being.

"Weren't you going to obtain the power to challenge even the gods? To ensure nobody would be able to take away your daughter again?"

As she opened her eyes the hint of tears was visible, flowing gently down her cheeks as they evaporated into her aura. "Or was your kindness toward us just that? A mere act? For if it was, you certainly played us like a fidle Papa Bucket..."

Defeated, utterly defeated. A shell of what he was after the failure to top all failures, striking him at the worst moment possible. After all, it’s hard to start climbing a mountain, but it’s so much harder to do it again after being knocked down. He had been knocked down, as deep into the old pits of self loathing that he had put so much effort into escaping from, taking him back to the days of a dead-eyed slave who moved on command. Who ate, shit and slept on command. So when she started talking to him in that harsh but cordial.. formal tone, the beaten animal of a man didn’t pay that much attention, just wishing she’d be gone. That she’d leave him alone.

What was hope worth with that affirmation that they had merely fused if it could just as easily be fake? He knew she had taken Lily’s body and for all he knew, she inherited her memories, not her soul. Not this sort of fusion of two separate entities like she was affirming. Reincarnation, yes, he knows that is possible, since he knows of what the gods are generally and usually capable of. What made it, then, the reincarnation she described and not some outside being, like an angel or a demon, reincarnating into a ‘suitable’ vessel and keeping some of their memories? This could very well be a demon’s plan to stop one of their enemies where they stood, a way to torment him further. He’d put nothing past those creatures. Whatever he was, he didn’t like it.. and he didn’t believe in the version she was telling him. “Just.. don't. Lily was a pure, wonderful little ball of joy. Smart, strong and with a bright future. It’d be too convenient for me to believe that she’s still alive and just united with you. It’s.. too good to be true. Far too good.” He said, lowering his head with no more tears in his tired, slightly emaciated and dehydrated body to shed.

Even her form, those tears.. it did not convince him for now, the burden of guilt was far too great for him to accept such a wonderful, rosy reality. “I’ll admit one thing. I wanted to obtain the power to usurp the skies and hell. I wanted to save all natural life in this world. Instead, I failed the one child that believed in me. It’d be way more than I deserve to find out that not only Lily survived.. but that she forgave me. Thank you for the sweet lie, if nothing else.” With that, he’d turn back again, with the idea of returning to his aimless wandering. Seeing the changed body of Lily was equally painful as it was comforting and entertaining that lie, though for a brief moment, still felt endlessly sweet. Too sweet. Too good to be true.

Was there truly no way for her words to reach him? Even now she could feel the aspects of her soul that were formed from her reincarnated self struggle to try to find a way to comfort the broken shell of a man in front of her. It was at that moment an idea overcame her. It was not exactly the simplest of ideas, and if anything, it would be quite a difficult matter to undo it. The idea was that her existence was born from a combination of two souls that coexisted in harmony, merged into something greater than the two individual souls when they were separated. However, maybe... Just maybe... there was a way.

"..." She closed her eyes, feeling the power that united the two souls work on shoving them far enough from each other to ensure they regained their own sense of identity. By the time this happened the girl's hair had turned a pure white again, her elven ears pointing slightly beyond her long locks as she spoke. "I won't forgive you for not believing in me Papa! I believed in you all that time! Remained strong and endured all these experiments they forced upon me! Even as they ridiculed me for being an elf and hurt my ears I still tried to smile because I believed you would come to rescue me!"

The tears were flowing freely now from the child as she cried. "And even now you're doing something cruel like this... You know I only survived because my other self-intervened in the ritual. It's because of her that I still exist. And now you're telling your other daughter to just go up and disappear?! I can't believe you would do something like that!"

She sobbed softly, the aura of her soul sparkling faintly. "Do you even understand what she is doing right now? She is trying her utmost to undo this unison, but doing that would burn away the last remnants of her existence, and she's doing this all without you even being willing to look at her for who she really is!"

She raised both her hands and cried out in anger. "Not once you tried to believe in us, while all this time we believed in you! Both me and Espy! She didn't even get to talk to you properly in person before, yet even as she observed our meetings she believed in you, in your strength and kindness. And now you're forsaking her? Telling her to go up and disappear from existence when this body by all right is hers? She gave up so much for others, but I thought you of all people would understand just how important it is to have someone to return home to. So no, I won't forgive you as long as you don't start believing in me! STUPID PAPA! BUCKET-HEADED PAPA! MEANY PAPA!"

Almost like a child throwing a tantrum she was sobbing uncontrollably, revealing Lily was well and truly still there, but this reunion might had come at a very expensive price.

The man was stumbling away from the girl when he heard.. that voice. That sweet voice of the child he had come to absolutely adore and look upon like his own child, that sime child he failed. Quickly turning to face her, he wanted to say something, anything, though all the weakened, starving man could do was stammer in shock, his hands meekly reaching out towards her. Dear little Lily, scolding her stupid sad papa for not believing in Esperia.

And what she said.. goodness, everything she said just dug the guilt deeper into his soul. It wasn’t just his guilt blaming himself, he had actual confirmation that she endured an endless hell with a smile, all because she believed in him. The man who couldn’t even save her in the end, the loser who failed her and let her die, to the point where the only way he could see her now was this Esperia girl allowing Lily to do so. Seeing her in this state, crying her heart out, worrying about him and the girl that owned her body instead of herself.. he couldn’t take it. There was no tears he could shed, though he found himself sobbing, stumbling over to his precious daughter, gently taking her into his weak arms.

“I.. never believed that you could forgive me for failing you. It’s still so hard to believe you’re here..! I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to be this happy..!” He sobbed for a few moments, letting his heart cry out while he held his precious daughter, petting her head, doing his best to console her in that awful moment. It was still hard to believe he even had the right to be this happy or that someone else would still care to do this for him.. so the least he could do was give back the kindness. “I’ll believe her. Both of you are my daughters, I promise. Even if I don’t deserve this many chances and love, I’ll believe you two! I won’t doubt you again.” He assured her, even his lungs too weak to speak louder than a soft, grungy whisper, though his arms still put in all the strength they could into a strong, tight fatherly hug. Though he didn’t want to say what was coming next, he had to. It was only right. “Let her back in. She deserves to live too. You both deserve to live. Daddy loves you both, I swear.” Yeah, it.. felt awful having to let go of the daughter he had come to love, without even having the chance to do right by her. At the very least, all he could do was hope that the Esperia girl could come back, so that he could do right by both of them.

Lily's gaze remained fixated upon Bucket as he spoke, causing her to shake her head lightly. "How could I possibly blame you for something that wasn't your fault to begin with? These mean people targeted me without anyone's awareness of their plans. If anything, the blame lies with me for having not been careful enough."

The raised a hand gently, her fingers caressing the surface of the bucket as she spoke in that same soft and gentle tone as before. "But know Papa, that even after we merge I still exist. I simply became a part of someone greater. After all: One plus One makes Two, but that Two doesn't mean the first ones disappeared, they simply are a part of the bigger Two. My love and affection for you will still remain, even after the merge you will continue to be our Papa."

She closed her eyes, trying to reach out to her other self. It seemed she could still find her, at the brink of her existence, and then silence. She slowly opened her eyes again, the tears having faded away alongside her aura. Her Kamui and Byakugan eyes gazing gently at Bucket as if they awaited his reaction to the events that had just transpired.